Blockchain breakthrough for Strathclyde Business School

written by Mickael Parispublished on August 24, 2017

Another breakthrough from the Strathclyde Business School in collaboration with the National Physical Laboratory, the Toronto Stock Exchange (TMX), and consultancy firm Z/Yen. They managed to timestamp financial stock trades with an atomic clock.

Over 20 million transactions were timestamped by The ‘Atomic Ledger’ project during three hours of trading.

Director of the Strathclyde's Centre for Financial Regulation and Innovation, Daniel Broby and his team will now analyse the results.

Mr Broby said: "The role of distributed ledgers and precision timing is becoming ever more relevant as Fintech companies adopt blockchain for financial transactions.This is an exciting trial that will have real world policy impact.It is at the cutting edge of both finance and technology, helping make money payments over the internet cheaper, faster and more efficient.”

Different processing speeds, server capabilities and execution code are today leading to orders arriving at a market place at different times.
However, current regulatory guidance implies that trades need to be recorded in microseconds (a millionth of a second).

The ‘Atomic Ledger’ project test went beyond microseconds. The Project was able to provide nanosecond resolution.

It is believed the results will provide a benchmark to incorporate the concept of timing into financial asset price discovery.